The open-ils.resolver service queries an OpenURL resolver for a given ISSN or ISBN and returns the full-text holdings coverage with URLs available for that material. This is useful if, for example, a patron searches for the "Journal of Brains" and you want to immediately provide links to the electronic resources where the resolver knows that your content is available. As some OpenURL resolvers take a long time (in Web seconds) to return responses to queries, open-ils.resolver caches the results of a query for a configurable period of time to speed up subsequent requests.

The SFX resolver requires sites to enable full-text holdings in their API using the SFXAdmin Web-based user interface. In the API section of the Menu Configuration Tool, enable the following options:

• Include availability info in text format
• Include availability info in structured XML format

If either of these options were not enabled, you will need to restart the SFX server.

So far the only Evergreen sites using the open-ils.resolver service run against SFX, but it should be possible to extend its support to other resolvers. Once we add another resolver to the mix, we will also want to add OU settings to configure the resolver type and base URL.

XML holdings are available from CUFTS by appending /xml to the URL, e.g. from http://cufts.example.com/Resolver/site/FOOBAR/resolve/openurl?issn=08241961 to http://cufts.example.com/Resolver/site/FOOBAR/resolve/openurl/xml?issn=08241961

Based on Auto-Populating an ILL form with the Serial Solutions Link Resolver API this appears to be feasible, but there does not appear to be any openly available demo server to develop against.